Kyra and I have been making plans for our trip to Costa Rica in August. We've booked flights and hotel rooms, planned our activities, and purchased equipment for the trip. It's going to be a lot of fun. Luca is going to be staying with Nana, and it sounds like he'll be going to some camps. I'm sure he'll have a blast!

We welcomed our friends, Nick and Elspeth, to the neighborhood. They bought a house down the street, and we helped them move in. It's really great to have them in the neighborhood, although they might get sick of us dropping by randomly!

We've been doing a lot of home improvement activities. We scheduled painters for the house, cleaned up our the landscaping in the back yard (a big project, still in progress!), and had all sorts of maintenance work completed. It's finally mowing season, too.

Back in April we went to an event called "Moon Over Monona", where amateur astromers had their telescopes set up to view the full moon, Jupiter, and other celestial objects. It was fun to get Luca out to see these, and I'm sure he appreciated staying up a little later than usual. I think we have pictures, but I'll have to post them another time.

We took a trip to the Twin Cities to visit our nieces, Liliana and Dalila. We had a lot of fun going swimming and seeing the girls. We got them a game for the Playstation 3 called Flower, which is really great for little kids. The controls are very intuitive for them, since it is simply about rotating the controller and pushing any button to move forward. It's a great game for kids.

Kyra and I got to go out for a movie a week or two ago. We saw the Grand Budapest Hotel, which was a great flick with a story in a story in a story (in a story?... depending on how you look at it). It was fun to spend an evening out with Kyra. It had really been too long.

We had a tour of Luca's new elementary school. It's exciting that he'll be going to kindergarten soon! It's likely that I'll be walking him to school every day, so that will be an interesting change from our current dynamic, with Kyra taking him to pre-school, where she works. We won't know as much of the ins-and-outs of the school, and that will present a challenge based on our current expectations.

We have some other news too, but we'll have to wait for another time. Keep in touch!